Rewriting history in Aleksandr Askoldov’s Commissar
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We’ve reached the end of season 5! Thank you to everyone for listening along. We’ll be back in 2026, but for now, happy holidays and speak to you soon.
To close out the season, we’re returning to the ever-expanding archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal and an essay on one of the great lost talents of the Soviet studio system. Aleksandr Askoldov only completed one feature film in his career, 1967’s excoriating anti-war drama Commissar, before falling foul of the censors and disappearing into obscurity. But the film remains a landmark for its deconstruction of Soviet mythology and its treatment of the USSR’s Jewish population. Klassiki favourite, writer and researcher Alisa Goruleva explores how Askoldov ended up on the wrong side of the censors but the right side of history.
Read the original piece here and watch Commissar on Klassiki now.
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